Note, however, you should follow some guidelines when linking.

- Keep your links simple. Fair use allows small quotes, and as long as you keep things short you should be fine. If you start including complex graphics or long passages of text then you are putting yourself at risk as well as possibly plagiarizing.

- Get permission where possible or feasible. This can work to your advantage, as you can do a "link exchange" which has many uses (more links to your site means a higher popularity by search engines).

- Include a section of your own which explains to your visitors that you have no control over external links You think they might be of interest, but you don't have any responsibility for their content.

- Again, only link to HTML and text style pages. Do not link to multimedia files (images, sounds and videos).

- Also, remember to not link to CGI routines (and other executable objects) without permission.

When you are designing your own site, it's a great idea to be sure that you understand that people will be bookmarking and linking to any and every page that you've got. Search engines also are notorious for sending visitors willy-nilly to whatever page they believe fits a search topic. Thus, your navigation and overall design must allow visitors to move around freely on your site regardless of which page they land upon.

The bottom line is simple. People can link to any page they want to within your site (just as they can bookmark anything at will). Those webmasters who moan about this practice or make attempts to stop it are wasting their time and have little understanding of how internet really works. Those who plan their website around concept will create a better experience for their visitors, gain more traffic and thus better achieve their goals.

Here are just a few:

HitBox http://www.hitbox.com/

What does HitBox report? · Traffic - Hourly, daily, monthly and annual statistics for page views and unique visitors · Referrers - Learn what sites link to you and how much traffic they send, search engines and keywords users search to find your site, and total traffic from bookmarks · User paths - See how users navigate through your site · User profiles - Find out browsers, operating systems and screen settings that your audience uses and their language, country and domain. · 100s of statistics

Extreme Tracking http://www.extreme-dm.com racking/

With eXTReMe Tracker you get every advanced feature required to picture visitors of your website. Conveniently arranged, numbers, percentages, stats, totals and averages. All way up from simple counting your visitors until tracking keywords they use to find you.

NedStat http://www.nedstat.com/

Nedstat Basic provides you with accurate answers to all important questions about your visitors, like which part of world or countries that they are from, on which days and at what times they hit your site and if you're reaching a greater audience.

You may find that much of your traffic is coming to you from a search engine or directory like Yahoo, http://www.yahoo.com/ or Google, http://www.google.com/.

You may also be pleasantly surprised to discover that a web site with related traffic has linked your site and is now sending you new visitors daily.

It would be a good idea to contact owner of that new traffic generator and let them know you appreciate link and even offer to link back to them in return.

Once you know where your traffic is coming from to find you, it is important to maintain that flow of traffic and then try to find other sources that are similar.

Doing so will allow you to increase visitors and leads you generate and hopefully, increase your overall sales.